A Singular Flame
by Marcus Livius Drusus
Summary: You know the stories. Like weeds, they grow on great men's graves. Apocryphal tales of swindled sweets, broken broomsticks, and precocious fidelity—these parasitic morality tales flourish within our cloistered little world. This is not one of the stories. This is the story of James Sirius Potter. It is not entirely accurate, but I assure you, dear reader, it is entirely true.


All fire is of the same fire: every mote, every spark of flame is born of one; it burns, it builds, it propels and it kills as one.

And this one fire, this singular conflagration is nurtured and culled in uncountable hearths and myriad hearts; it bleeds atemporal through our parchment recollection, woven as Slytherin's namesake through the history of our kind. It is itself born of magic, summoned with the simplest of incantations. And yet it is born of the mundane as well. Brought about by muggle means, it fuels their strange mechanisms, their terrible ersatz magic.

It serves them as it does us. It burns them as it does us. It is a first cause, a witness, a friend on cold nights. It is destruction incarnate, a censor of knowledge, often a is a force, a primal thing that cannot be judged or lauded as one would a man.

And yet some men, I think, are made of fire. And like fire these great men should not be celebrated nor condemned. When studying their deeds, we should not lay on them blame or interpretation; we should seek only knowledge's light, its gentle warmth.

And the youngest of us should not study them at all; The young should wait until they are worn and old. For as the story of James Sirius Potter tells us, there is a risk when the young learn of those who have done great things, a risk that they will be burned or, worse, become the kin of flames and, themselves, join that disinterested inferno, that all-fire which forges history before it is collated, still smoldering, between the sturdy coves of a book.—_an excerpt from to The Short and Brilliant Life of James Potter II by Terry Boot._

When people learn James was my student and nephew (through my former husband), they often ask me what he was like. They want to know if he was a normal boy, if there was any sign of what he would become. My response is always the same. I tell them, "Even before his first year at Hogwarts, everyone could tell James was not an average wizard."

British witches and wizards tend to find this an intuitive answer, accepting it as a confirmation of pre-existing suspicions. But Americans always betray a little disappointment when they hear this truth. I think it's because they want an aspirational narrative, a narrative about how through hard work and gumption a normal boy can become an extraordinary man. This has all but confirmed the hypothesis I developed while apprenticing at Salem: All Americans are idiots, especially the clever ones.—_an excerpt form The Correspondence of a Scholar: The Published Letters of Professor Hermione Granger_

**An Introduction by the Author**

You know the stories. Like weeds, they grow on great men's graves. Apocryphal tales of swindled sweets, broken broomsticks, and precocious fidelity—these parasitic morality tales flourish in our culture, within our cloistered little world. We cheapen Merlin with imprecation, we cheapen Harry Potter by seeing him as celebrity rather than a hero, and we cheapen his son by drowning him in lore, mottling his legend with those noxious stories which line the shelves of Borgin & Burkes. He was one of the most important young wizards of our generation, and greedy hacks have turned his life into a lucrative fairy-tale.

I allude to these noisome tales only to inform my audience of what this work is not. Though this is a fictionalization of James's life, it does not depart from the facts. The major incidents relayed in this novel are verified by the diligent work of the renowned biographer Terry Boot (who I am proud to call a friend), various letters, interviews, diary entries, and correspondences which were collected and organized after his death, and my own brief encounters with James while attending Hogwarts myself.

I never knew James well. But I've admired his life from a distance. England owes him much, and magic more still. I suppose I've written this as a way of paying him back. As I am novelist, my only currency is stories.

And this is the story of James Sirius Potter. It is not entirely accurate, but I assure you, dear reader, it is entirely true.

1

James's room was the highest in the house. That glum September morning, it was also the coldest. He was sitting at the desk by his bed, shivering but not entirely uncomfortable. At least, he was not so uncomfortable as to be impeded in his studies. Though he was a peculiarly studious boy, so perhaps that isn't saying much about his state of being. His mother, Ginny Potter, once said he could a read a book at a Holly Heads concert whist covered in wartroot venom. And with a little effort, he probably could have, for he was a master of the art of sustained concentration. If he set himself a task, he would do it right away with a sort of relaxed productivity which was the envy of his friends and fellows in Ravenclaw house - to whom procrastination was the stuff of nightmares, and rightfully so.

That day he had set himself the task of memorizing his fifth-year ratio tables. He was fond of potions, as those with exact minds tend to be. So he sat at the desk, staring at the little tables of his potions textbook and fixing them in his memory, carefully constructing mnemonics for each and reciting ratios aloud to solidify what he was learning. He was a skinny boy, not underfed of course, but in possession of the tall, scrawny form and countenance of an endurance athlete, lacking in both fat an muscles but possessing an aspect of ungainly tenacity that was, in its own way, oddly formidable. His hair was a mess, a bird's nest resistant to all forms of remediation, something he had inherited from his father, Harry Potter, and—he was told—his father before him. Congenital bad hair, his sister Lily once called it, before likening it to Mugroot's disease.

His room was in his parent's attic—which he had suborned for himself in his eleventh year, to his father's brief dismay. Discovering James sleeping on a blanket there, he seemed on the verge punishing him. Disliking (no doubt because of the circumstances of his own youth) the prospect of his son living in an attic, his eyes filled with a foreign anger; and then, for no reason James could comprehend, the anger died as quickly as it came. And his father smiled and asked him, "Do you really think you would be happier living in the attic?" James told him he would, that he was tired of sharing a room with his brother, Albus. "Well, er, than I suppose you can then," Harry said. And with that he walked down to James's old room, pointed his wand at James's bed and levitated it up to the attic with a silently cast wingardium. James had been sleeping there every summer and winter break since. Though now it was hardly recognisable. The walls, which met (a triangle) at the apex of the roof were lined with muggle movie posters, the floor had been carpeted at his father's insistence, and the small desk and chair had been added by James's request.

James continued studying until he heard a small knock on his door.

"Come in," James said. It was his sister Lily.

"You all packed?" Lily said, walking into attic. She shared her mother's carrot hair, her russet eyes. She was three years younger than James, in her second year at Hogwarts. Freckles dotted the pale flesh of her young face, concentrated around her brow.

"Yeah, why?"

"Mum told me to ask you if you were all packed." James nodded and went back to his studying.

"What are you doing then?" Lily said, staring at him with her large eyes.

James looked up from his book. "What does it look like?"

"Looks like you're studying."

"Ten points to Gryffindor," James said with a smirk. And then, as compass finds its center, his brown eyes slipped back to his book and his mind to it's state of relaxed concentration. And as for his sister, well, she slipped right out of his mind entirely. That is until he felt a slight tap on his shoulder.

"What you studying then?"

"Potion tables, Lily. I'm memorizing potion tables. Don't you have something better do than bother me?"

"Nope," she said. "And don't you have something better to do than memorizing potion tables. The whole point of potion tables is you don't have to memorize them."

"Well what else I'm a supposed to do. I've got five hours to kill before we leave for the express. I can't do magic. I've finished all my homework. I've finished all the books I took out of the library. My quick silver's packed so flying is out of the question. And did I mention I can't do magic?" Lily shook her head up and down in affirmation. "So if I chose to memorize that-which-shouldn't-be-memorized, what is it to you?"

"Well, I'm bored, and you're bored. You up for exploding snap?

James considered the proposal. There really was no rational reason to memorize potions tables. And yet he wasn't particularly fond of exploding snap.

"How about chess?" he said.

Lily assented and they spent several pleasant hours in fierce competition, cross-legged on the attic floor, a board full of animated pieces warring between them. Lily had a surprising head for tactics. And though James won all the games he played with her that morning, he did not do so easily. With a few mouths practice, he thought, she will be able to beat me easy. He shared his thoughts after the heated aftermath of their final game, with a smidge of pride in his voice. And she seemed to take the complement well.

"A few months practice?" she said. "That last one was almost a draw." She began resetting the board. "I've got all the practice I'll need for now. You're going down, James." But that game was never played, for before their pawns marched down the checked battlefield for one more fight in their infinite war, Ginny's strident voice came barrelling up the stairs.

"Lil, James, get your trunks now! We're late."

No wizard alive remembers the days before apparition. And yet, as these things are measured, it is a relatively new spell. First developed by ministry spell weavers in the mid- nineteenth century, few strains of magic have has so changed magical culture. For before apparition, and the floo network which is younger still, tardiness was seen as the height of impoliteness. To those naïve to the peculiarities of wizard nature, this may seem paradoxical. Surely, one might justly think, in an era in which broomsticks were the only means of transportation, delay would be tolerated. And yet this was not so. It is only now that travel is instantaneous that lateness has become so accepted. And the reason is simple: Now that witches and wizards pay no account in their schedules for travel and it's myriad delays, they have developed a strange and absolute addiction to the prospect of departing at the last possible instant.

It is, of course, a strange quirk of our universe that the last possible instant is invariably ten minutes ago.

#

Harry Potter was not fond of crowds. It was not that he was a particularly shy man, having no more diffidence in his character than is common in every British wizard. No, Harry Potter was not fond of crowds purely because of his face. It was not an ugly face, nor was it handsome. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to say his countenance was in any way remarkable, save for a lighting-bolt scar on his forehead, now quite faded, and perhaps his striking green eyes. The only truly novel thing about it, though, was the fact that it was so recognizable. In fact, it was among the most recognizable faces in magical Britain.

He and his youngest son, Albus Potter, were sitting on a bench which stood against the brickwork wall of platform 9 ¾ waiting for Ginny, Lily and James.

The atmosphere should have been pleasant. The the giggles of excited children and the buzzing of the Hogwarts Express's idling engine echoed off the masonry of the well-lit station. The gleaming iron tracks on which the train stood sparkled and the train itself gleamed with strange and subtle magic. All these sounds, all these sights were a perfect recipe for nostalgic recollection. And yet, for Harry at least, the atmosphere wasn't pleasant at all. All of it was marred by the crowd which was gathering around him, a crowd of gawking witches and wizards, a few of them offering him their thanks. Many more were asking for his autograph, others just staring at him with impolite fascination.

It is quite damning that we make celebrities of our heroes, that we gawk and point at them as strange anomalies. If the populace Harry Potter had spent his youth protecting had half of his virtue perhaps his life wouldn't have been so hard. But alas, Britain lacks for heroes and those few we have must suffer for it.

And Harry was suffering then. All he wanted was to see his children off to school as any good father would, but now he was forced to contend with these strangers, these gawkers who wanted a piece of his time, of his life.

It all came to a head when a thin, bespectacled wizard (a small thin blonde boy clinging to his arm) asked for an autograph. "Would you mind, just to prove to me mates I met you," he said in a clipped accent. Harry declined as politely as he could. "Arrogant tosser," the man mumbled as he marched away, the child still on his arm. In a spark of annoyance, Harry grabbed Albus's hand and, as one, they disaparated, reappearing on another bench on the other side of the Hogwarts express.

"Merlin, Dad. Warn me before you do that."

While James resembled his father no more than most sons do, Albus was his spitting image. Now in his fourteenth year, he looked exactly as his father had when he first graced the cover of the Daily Prophet as Hogwarts' champion. He only lacked the glasses and signature scar.

"Sorry, Al. But autographs? Do they think I'm Holly bloody Harpy?"

Albus shook his head. His father could be such a simpleton sometimes. "I don't know, dad. People are mad for you. Of course they want your autograph."

"They're mad alright," Harry grumbled. "I'm going to take us back. And then, er, don my disguise. So just remember—"

"One hoot yes, two hoots no. Merlin, I'm not a sodding idiot.

With a pop, Albus, his father and trunk appeared back on the proper side of the tracks in dark corner a few dozen yards from the now-dissipating crowd. But Harry did not remain recognizable for long. In fact, within an instant of his arrival, he began to morph into his animagus form: a small snowy owl with large, intelligent eyes of the fiercest emerald. He stood, his taloons atop the cobblestone floor, for but a moment; and then (a burst of feathers, the ruffle of strong wings) he flew to his son's left shoulders and sat upon it, his claws tearing into Albus's green muggle jacket. And he looked then, for all the world, like young Albus's familiar, and nothing more.

"That was so cool. When you going to teach me," Albus said.

"Hoot, hoot."

"Alright I'll teach myself, then. Hermione will give me a pass to the restricted section; she's right fond of me." The owl shrieked and pecked him in his ear. "Merlin, give a man a beak and he can't help but peck. You want to look for the family, then?" The owl on his shoulder hooted once, and Albus begain walking towards the entrance. "Right, they should be here already. Train's leaving in twenty. How's life as an owl, then? You enjoying yourself?

"Hoot."

"Course you are; you get a free ride on my shoulder while I have to lug this trunk around. Of course, the trunk weighs next to nought 'cause of that featherweight charm you cast. But I think in situations such as this principles matter more than practicalities. You agree?" The owl hooted and pecked Albus's head.

Albus continued walking. Within half a minute, he and his passenger arrived at the entrance, a large slice of the platform's brick wall on which an impressive permeability charm had been cast. Around the entrance a diffuse crowd had gathered. But it was not a crowd of fans. Instead it was other children and parents who, like Albus and Harry, were waiting for family and friends. Periodically, students and their parents would come through the entrance and either head straight to the train or pair off with their loved ones in the crowd

"Always late and never fashionable. You're lucky you had me, dad, the rest of your children are complete rubbish." After receiving a particularly hard peak in the ear, Albus said, "Well, maybe they're not complete rubbish. Lily will make a fine chaser in a few years. And James is the best flyer on the Ravenclaw team, which is a little like the title of most charitable goblin. But I suppose it is something."

At that moment, a pretty girl with black hair, brown eyes and green robes walked through the brickwork entrance and past Albus. She did not spare him a glance and yet somehow, through the strange and subtle mysteries of female psychology and body language, was able to broadcast utter distain for the boy she did not even deign to perceive.

"You see her?" Albus whispered. "That's Taylor Greengrass, the girl I fancy—well, one of them anyway. She's been right difficult to talk too. Thinks I'm an arrogant berk, if you'd believe it. Though she's a Slytherin, so perhaps it was a complement coming form her." Harry just stared at his son, his beak open. "Well don't just stare at me with your big owl eyes. You got any fatherly advice?

"Hoot, hoot, hoot?"

"Well I thought of that, didn't I? I know that's how you bagged mum. But I've been having trouble procuring a basilisk. And on the whole, I'd prefer it if Taylor survived the process." Harry began furiously peaking his son's ear. "You'll give me scar if you keep doing that. I know the whole scar angle is how you got the birds in those wild years before mum got her hooks in. But I think the story behind the scar's more important, you know? It's not the scar it's how you got it. 'I killed a darklord' is a bit sexier than 'me dad turned into and owl and pecked me half to death"

Harry continued pecking.

"If you stop this pecking business and I'll stop it with the talking." Harry hooted. "Quite a shame that; I get bored when I'm not talking." If this was true, he wasn't bored for long. For just then James, Lily and Ginny Potter walked through the brickwork entrance and Albus said, "Brother, sister, mother, have you met my new owl?"


End file.
